Rules of Prey: A Lucas Davenport Novel

The "maddog" murderer who is terrorizing the Twin Cities is two things: insane and extremely intelligent. He kills for the pleasure of it and thoroughly enjoys placing elaborate obstacles to keep police befuddled. Each clever move he makes is another point of pride. But when the brilliant Lieutenant Lucas Davenport, a dedicated cop and a serial killer's worst nightmare, is brought in to take up the investigation, the maddog suddenly has an adversary worthy of his genius.

The Watchman: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 11

Pike commits himself to protecting the girl, but when they immediately come under fire, he realizes someone is selling them out.

As the body count rises, Pike's biggest threat might come from the girl herself, a lost soul in the City of Angels, determined to destroy herself - unless Joe Pike can teach her the value of life...and love.

What the Night Knows

In the late summer of a long-ago year, a killer arrived in a small city. His name was Alton Turner Blackwood, and in the space of a few months he brutally murdered four families. His savage spree ended only when he himself was killed by the last survivor of the last family, a 14-year-old boy. Half a continent away and two decades later, someone is murdering families again, re-creating in detail Blackwood’s crimes.

Ashes to Ashes

He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won't stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn't talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still.

Tier One

John Dempsey's life - as an elite Tier One Navy SEAL named Jack Kemper - is over. A devastating terrorist action catapults him from a world of moral certainty and decisive orders into the shadowy realm of espionage, where ambiguity is the only rule. His new mission: hunt down those responsible for the greatest tragedy in the history of the US Special Ops and bring them to justice.

Tell No One

Tell No One is an irresistibly suspenseful thriller infused with nail-biting tension and packed with shocking plot twists. It has been eight years since Dr. David Beck’s wife, Elizabeth, was murdered by a serial killer. When Beck receives a message containing a phrase only Elizabeth should know, he is tormented to tears. Either someone is playing a sick joke, or the wife he’s never stopped loving is still alive. He’s been warned to tell no one, and as the desperation of his search for the truth intensifies, he heads straight toward a deadly secret.

Tom Clancy Presents: Act of Valor

Act of Valor takes audiences deep into the secretive world of the most elite, highly trained group of warriors in the modern world. When the rescue of a kidnapped CIA operative leads to the discovery of a deadly terrorist plot against the U.S., a team of SEALs is dispatched on a worldwide manhunt. As the valiant men of Bandito Platoon race to stop a coordinated attack that could kill and wound thousands of American civilians, they must balance their commitment to country, team and their families back home.

The Cold Dish: A Walt Longmire Mystery

Introducing Wyoming's Sheriff Walt Longmire in this riveting novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Dry Bones, the first in the Longmire series, the basis for the hit Netflix original series Longmire. Johnson draws on his deep attachment to the American West to produce a literary mystery of stunning authenticity, full of memorable characters.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, or On the Segregation of the Queen: Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, Book 1

In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees when a young woman literally stumbles into him on the Sussex Downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes - and match him wit for wit. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern 20th-century woman proves a deft protégée and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective.

The Short Drop

A decade ago, fourteen-year-old Suzanne Lombard, the daughter of Benjamin Lombard - then a senator, now a powerful vice president running for the presidency - disappeared in the most sensational missing-person case in the nation's history. Still unsolved, the mystery remains a national obsession. For legendary hacker and marine Gibson Vaughn, the case is personal - Suzanne Lombard had been like a sister to him.

Blood Defense

Samantha Brinkman, an ambitious, hard-charging Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, is struggling to make a name for herself and to drag her fledgling practice into the big leagues. Sam lands a high-profile double-murder case in which one of the victims is a beloved TV star - and the defendant is a decorated veteran LAPD detective. It promises to be exactly the kind of media sensation that would establish her as a heavy hitter in the world of criminal law.

The Late Show

Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none, as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two cases she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn.

Genuine Lies

Eve Benedict is the kind of subject who could make any biographer's career. Last of the movie goddesses, she has two Oscars, four ex-husbands, and a legion of lovers, both famous and infamous. Now she is ready to write a tell-all memoir that has even Hollywood's richest and most powerful worried. Julia Summers never dreamed of being chosen to tell Eve's story.

Still Life: Chief Inspector Gamache, Book 1

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

Rising Sun: A Novel

A riveting thriller of corporate intrigue and cutthroat competition between American and Japanese business interests. On the forty-fifth floor of the Nakamoto tower in downtown Los Angeles - the new American headquarters of the immense Japanese conglomerate - a grand opening celebration is in full swing. On the forty-sixth floor, in an empty conference room, the corpse of a beautiful young woman is discovered.

The Whiskey Rebels

At his most desperate moment, Ethan Saunders is recruited to find his ex-fiancée's missing husband. Meanwhile, Joan Maycott and her Revolutionary War veteran husband distill whiskey on the western Pennsylvania frontier. As their causes intertwine, Joan and Saunders - both patriots in their own way - find themselves on opposing sides of a daring scheme that will forever change their lives and their new country.

The Life We Bury

College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran-and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.

The Bullet

Two words: the bullet. That's all it takes to shatter her life. Caroline Cashion is beautiful, intelligent, a professor of French literature. But in a split second, everything she's known is proved to be a lie. A single bullet, gracefully tapered at one end, is found lodged at the base of her skull. Caroline is stunned. It makes no sense: She has never been shot. She has no entry wound, no scar. Then, over the course of one awful evening, she learns the truth.

Still Missing

On the day she was abducted, Annie O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old Realtor, had three goals: sell a house, forget about a recent argument with her mother, and be on time for dinner with her ever-patient boyfriend. The open house is slow, but when her last visitor pulls up in a van as she’s about to leave, Annie thinks it just might be her lucky day after all.

A Deeper Darkness

As a medical examiner, Samantha Owens knows her job is to make a certain sense of death with crisp methodology and precision instruments. But the day the Tennessee floods took her husband and children, the light vanished from Sam’s life. She has been pulled into a suffocating grief no amount of workaholic ardor can penetrate - until she receives a peculiar call from Washington, D.C. On the other end of the line is an old boyfriend’s mother, asking Sam to do a second autopsy on her son.

The Winter of Frankie Machine

Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex-surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront. An affable Italian with a love of people and life, he's a stand-up businessman, devoted father, and a beloved fixture in the community. He's also a hit man - specifically, a retired hit man. Back in the day when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine.

Surf City Swami says:"The Winter of Frankie Machine is a ray of sunshine"

The Silent Girls

Frank Rath thought he was done with murder when he turned in his detective's badge to become a private investigator and raise a daughter alone. Then the police in his remote rural community of Canaan find an '89 Monte Carlo abandoned by the side of the road, and the beautiful teenage girl who owned the car seems to have disappeared without a trace. Soon Rath's investigation brings him face to face with the darkest abominations of the human soul.

The Night Bird

Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn't like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco - as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks - Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie's controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories...and all the victims were her patients.

Valhalla

In remote, icy Greenland, ex-Air Force General Steven Macaulay helps lead an expedition to recover a lost World War II plane. Encased in ice below is a find that will astonish the world - a perfectly-preserved Viking ship, buried for nearly a thousand years, along with the frozen corpses of nine crewmen. Assembling the foremost Viking scholars, Macaulay tasks the gorgeous Lexy Vaughan to translate the ship’s markings - until her work is cut short when her colleagues are murdered.

Publisher's Summary

In Shadow Prey, the crackling sequel to Rules of Prey, Twin Cities sleuth Lucas Davenport teams up with NYPD Lieutenant Lily Rothenberg to track down an elusive killer known only as Shadow Love. Among the victims are a Minneapolis slumlord, a judge from Oklahoma City, and a Manhattan politician. The murder weapon is a Native American ceremonial knife.

All the Davenport Novels are worth a read, this particular book is great because it revolves around a younger, crazier, slutty, always manipulative Lucas, a group of fugitives that are both interesting & dangerous, & many of Davenports close friends in the future are cementing they're loyalties from these earlier novels. For some reason I read so many of the other Prey novels before I came back & read this one which is technically the 2nd in the series... It was worth it almost to the point I wish I read it earlier. But all his books are great & the development of Lucas & his family all take place throughout the series but this book is still in the stages before he had to worry about another woman, kids, politics, & future responsibilities I ended up reading at almost the same time because I was reading Silken Prey shorty after....

Highly recommend this book... LUCAS is establishing why he is such a bada$* & has the reputation he does....

I'm not a huge fan of the early novel in the "Prey" series. Once Davenport meets and marries Weather, they have Sam, and Lettie enters the picture the novels get much better. I suspect my issues with the first 13 novels in the series, and especially with the first 6, is that Davenport seems rudderless and without a strong moral center of gravity. Davenport in Shadow Prey definitely fits that description. I like Lucas Davenport the family man more than Lucas Davenport the rogue, This book was released in 1990 and the series remains active with Book 25 being recently released.

I had a little trouble getting interested during the first half of the book but the second half had the Sandford momentum I've come to expect. Didn't like Davenport much in this book. Narration spotless as always with Mr. Ferrone.

Lucas Davenport and his friends continue to develop well. We see glimpses of the future relationships in this early novel. What I liked best was how perfectly Ferrone and Sandford sync. It is as though Sandford wrote his books with Ferrone in mind. He builds the suspense perfectly and allows the darkness of the mystery to settle upon the listener.

Would you consider the audio edition of Shadow Prey to be better than the print version?

Yes

Who was your favorite character and why?

Lucas...he is the meat of the story. He makes the series. and Lily was sensational.

Which scene was your favorite?

Too many to choose

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Absolutely, I stay up all night listening.

Any additional comments?

Richard Ferrone is an awesome narrator. He makes All of the Prey Books ":come alive". I hope he is ALWAYS the narrator of the Prey series One of the best stories in the Prey Serie s..This was an exciting book with a lot of action. The story was interesting and riveting.. I highly recommend this Prey Book.

The Prey series is a truly wonderful collection of books. Davenport is a complex character in the best of ways. He is a dodgy, reckless, self made rich guy with some unpleasant traits but he sure is fun. Intelligent friends and fellow cops add more humour and insight into the dark situations the barking mad criminals create. The descriptive writing is beautiful and thoughtful too, never jumping to simplistic assumptions about the forces that drive human beings.
The audiobooks are just as they should be - unabridged and most importantly, read by the same excellent reader. When you have such a rich collection of characters as this you obviously form ideas and images about them. Changing the reader of a series is unbelievably stupid. It ruins continuity, and the rhythm and pace of the entire book. It is like turning the TV on to watch Inspector Morse and finding that he's played by an unknown actor.

So, what is wrong with this one? It is the second Prey book and was the only one not recorded at the time. Perhaps because is was no good? It is drawn out with a weak storyline, a tedious sexual affair and unfocused baddies. All the things that John Sandford's Prey books are not, usually.

Please don't judge the Prey series by this one. The best in the series in my opinion are two of the best books I have ever heard, the two Rinker books, Certain and Mortal Prey. There's not enough room or time here to do them justice. Perhaps it is best to start at the begining with Rules of Prey and omit this one.

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